Table of ContentsIntroductionA Child's EnvironmentThe Nature of a ChildConclusionIntroduction Otis Toole was an infamous serial killer between 1961 and 1983, was he predisposed to becoming a killer or were there effects that led him to become a killer? As a child, Toole was subjected to much abuse by his father and others, and was disguised as a girl and called Susan. Tool's environment as a child played a large role in the monster he would become as an adult. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay. Other serial killers grow up in a loving home and are born killers like Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer, their sinister tendencies don't come from their stable homes. As we grow up, we acquire personality traits from our environment, like Toole, his abusive behavior from his father, and we also develop natural instincts like Bundy and Dahmer. Although the majority of us are not serial killers, we all establish our personality somewhere. As a child, one will pick up on the personality traits that he establishes through his environment and combine them with those traits that are learned naturally. A Child's Environment John Watson, a well-known psychologist strongly believed that a child's environment and surroundings are the fuel of a child's personality. and behavior. Watson would have believed that the product of your current personality is the result of your childhood environment. A child who grew up in an abusive and poor home would have different personality differences than a child who grew up in the upper class with supportive parents. Beth Thomas “the child of rage” experienced an abusive childhood very early on, a childhood that led her to pick up these abusive traits. At the age of one, Thomas was sexually assaulted by her biological father. She was then taken away and placed with her adoptive family at 19 months old. At six years old, she still had vivid nightmares of what she had endured years before while living with her father. As a result of this sexual abuse, Thomas developed a turbulent personality as she abused her brother by assaulting and injuring him as well as injuring animals. Her adoptive mother said Beth would masturbate at inappropriate times and daily. Thomas also admitted to wanting to kill his adoptive parents and brother, his parents locked his bedroom door from the outside, worried about what might happen if they didn't, e.g. knives were disappearing from the kitchen (Ruiz, G. 2018, April 18). Thomas's angry personality might have been "normal" if she had not endured her father's abuse. BF Skinner developed the theory of operant conditioning in Discovering the Life Span. It is stated that "operant conditioning is a form of learning in which a voluntary response is strengthened or weakened by its association with positive or negative consequences...individuals learn to act on their environment to bring about desired consequences". Thomas admits to not liking people, she associated her abuse of her father with other people, so her association with people was weakened. To bring about the desired consequences of another's death, she would inflict pain on her brother, she admitted to squeezing and touching his genitals. Thomas was also caught trying to crush his brother's head against the concrete floor of the basement in a fit of trying to kill him. Thomas associated his brother as she diddid with her father because he was family, male, and had "private parts", so she committed many acts of torment on her brother, John. Thomas was conditioned to have negative thoughts towards her family, she said the thoughts came from her biological father hurting her and the thoughts were mainly passed on to her brother. Another theory that plays a role in Thomas' behavior is Sigmund Freud's psychosexual development, which he states that a child's parents play a vital role in developing their sexual and aggressive tensions in their lives. Her aggression was motivated by the fact that each step of this theory was not properly followed, leading her to be obsessed with aggression and sexual tendencies like masturbation. Beth Thomas was born into an unhealthy environment where she was conditioned to her abusive traits and resulted in her sinister personality. A child's natureNature is defined as “what we consider to be pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic inheritance and other biological factors” (Mcleod, S. 2018, December 20). A child can possess personality traits made up of his or her genetic code. Identical twins can tell us a lot about the genetic makeup of our personality since they share the same genetic makeup. Studies of twins have shown that when raised in different households, the twins still exhibit the same personality traits, as if they had never been separated. This shows us that their personality was inherited and not due to their environment, in case their environment played the most important role, these twins would have had completely different personalities. Eysenck's theory of personality considers that a person's personality is inherited and affects how they adapt and learn in their environment. This theory would explain the study of when twins are separated but their personalities remain the same, the twins have inherited their personalities and are able to adapt and learn in their different environments in the same way. In comparison, another study was carried out on two twins. males separated at birth at four weeks of age. The two brothers were then reunited at thirty-nine years old and the similarities in their lives were incredible. Among the similarities, both men had been married to a woman named Linda and then divorced, had a pet named Toy, worked part-time in law enforcement, and both bit their nails. Even though all of these experiences they had throughout their lives were surprisingly similar on a personality test, their results differed greatly. This supports our idea that nature plays a role in personality to some extent, but not entirely. These twins grew up in different homes and showed having the same experiences throughout their lives, which may further confirm that our genetic information has an influence on why these twins have had carbon copy lives, they made the same choices to take them on such similar roads. We found that nature played a role in determining the personalities of these twins, but because their environments were diverse, their personalities could diverge from each other. Conclusion It is determined that nature and nurture play a vital role in determining one's personality. We found that Beth Thomas' environment played a major role in her aggressive personality, but did not affect her brother John the way it did hers. We have.